From then on, everything goes fast, as if we had entered a race. At eight forty-five, we resume the hike down through thickening vegetation and toward increasing heat. I keep looking back, caught in a powerful urge to rush back up on jellyfish legs, my ears filled with the beguiling high notes of the near-freezing wind of dawn. Instead, my nose is now filling with the repulsive odour of the decaying flesh of the fruit, which has saturated pack, clothing, skin, my very breath. Dripping wet in the jungle steamer, I exude the fine scent of eau de raw sewage.
On the forested path, my knees and quads can’t take it anymore. Ebin fetches me a branch to use as a walking stick. The path is slick with mud churned in yesterday’s rains. I slide and stumble on the rocks strewn along it. Each time I find myself on my ass, Ebin goes tut-tut-tut, a teacher reproaching his undisciplined student. That is moi in the flesh, the lazy pupil with his head in the clouds and his ass in the mud. As we descend, the dreaded sticky heat of the jungle wraps around my body its multiple arms covered in suckers. And with decreasing altitude and increasing heat, the stink of the durian gains in potency. Quietly, Ebin puts more and more distance between us.
It is high noon when we reach headquarters, after descending, from summit to power station, 2,272 metres. Even on level ground, I am unable to support my weight. A disarticulated puppet, I bid Ebin goodbye with many thanks. With regrets that we didn’t linger in the frigidarium of the mountain.
At the counter, I receive a certificate of excellence for having climbed Mount Kinabalu. Grin at the sweet touch. Imagine Parks Canada handing out certificates to all successful peak baggers of Mount Robson. I buy a stamp and drop the poskad into the mailbox by the door. Someone says the bas will soon depart for Kota Kinabalu. My port of exit. And home. Will the bas wait, the last available seat permanently reserved for Jillanto? I rush to grab my large pack left in storage. Exit into the brutal sun.
Begging your pardon, ratbag. You stink to high hell.
This, mate, is the empirical knowledge of durian.
Going back down?
Nah. I’ve had it with the green inferno. Though, I have a cool friend living down there. Dr. Gustavia Sabourin. She’s an alchemist sorcerer, that one. She could give me a root, a rhizome, a leaf, a seed. Any concoction from her herbal cornucopia to cure swollen sweat glands and to curb this unbearable sweating of mine. To say nothing of healing punctures by durian.
If you change your mind, here’s a parting gift from your mate.
And he hands me a tube of potent Aussie-made insect repellent.
It may dissolve plastic, but it’s guaranteed to resist removal caused even by your excessive sweating. It’ll keep you safe from all those bugs out there. And that’s dinkum talk from your mate. Well, it was a challenge spending time in your company. A bit of advice. Don’t be so stroppy. Learn to slow down. You’ll enjoy the tropics more.
On that note, he gets on the bas, taking the last available seat. Leans out the open window.
My Sue was trigger-happy. She’d still be alive if she hadn’t been so frazzled all the time. So, mate, don’t fight it. Welcome yourself to paradise.
Squeaky clean after a long shower, I take a later bas driving down Aki Nabalu. Toward the sea, toward the jungle.
I write Sab another poskad: I’m not staying, old pal. With the sunrise, I’m outta your Borneo paradise. Must escape this heat that rumbles, steams blood, pops lungs. Must run away from ear-splitting night ménagerie in sticky jungle. Midnight monkeys moaning in monotone. Nocturnal parrots mimicking rusty hinges. Two o’clock tuak-carousing Dayaks paddling splat. Dogs snarling. Night barge roaring down molasses river. Four o’clock cocks crowing crazy. And the cherry on the ais krim, high-pitched Anopheles drilling malaria into skin, into blood. Such is your paradise, Sab, my dearest friend, with its touch of inferno. Not for me. Not for me. Avec toute mon affection from our northern country, your old pal Gillo.
Then, I stare at the tube of insect repellent. Hugh Low’s voice in my ear, grating: Don’t be so stroppy. Learn to slow down. You’ll enjoy the tropics more.
Driving back toward Sab’s jungle bungalow. Showing up, smeared with a miracle of chemistry that will keep Anopheles at bay. The housekeeper will assure me the doctor is now back from collecting. The extinct plant may or may not be extinct, the expedition, a wild goose chase or a stunning discovery. Sab and I will sit in those big chairs on the veranda. Will sip gin pahits. Will watch the molasses river flow by. Will yak up a storm. Slowly reconnecting. While I wait for the inaugural bout of malaria the down-under man swears I haven’t got. Jungle fever forever. I am here. Might as well stay a while. Sab, cool as ever. Sab, the healer, will block the signalling pathway of pain, won’t she? And when sweating like a babi, I could always hike back up Gunung Kinabalu and find salvation in the realm of the cold. Sweat your buckets, Jillanto. Don’t fight it, mate. No sweat, I will tell Sab. No sweat. And Sab sipping her gin pahit will say, Lanctôt my man, so glad you could come. And in this manner, I will welcome myself to your paradise. Because, Sab, old friend, you always got me.
Onion
BAREFOOT, Jacques Lachance staggers into the kitchen, awakened by Maddie’s nocturnal activity.
I had no idea, ma grande. It’s not just trouble sleeping. You are a true night owl.
Ha! Maddie guffaws, raising her head from her kitchen lab book. I’m nothing but. She taps the book with her pen: Water boils four degrees Celsius lower here in Calgary than in Montréal. Did you know that?
Jacques slips his rock shoes on and, with his chin, points at the display of postcards pinned on the walls and the high ceiling of his Bowness bungalow. He moves his head this way and that, like a bird on a spring: I’m surprised your mom didn’t write you about that.
Maddie could not be more surprised than him. A few minutes before, her expectation of success had run high. Now, her first Calgary experiment lies in ruins on the kitchen counter. A few minutes back, the water had come to a full boil. Maddie rinsed the batch of pearl onions that had been steeping in its salt-water basin for two days (200 grams of salt dissolved in two litres of water, she had noted in her book) and dipped them into the stockpot, a few at a time so as not to lower the temperature too much. When the water boiled again, she counted sixty seconds. Removed the pearls with her skimmer, plunged them into cold water to prevent further cooking. Popped one onion into her mouth. A tad too crunchy. But a tad was a tad. How could that be?
In Montréal, through trial and error in the course of countless sleepless nights, she had taught herself to blanch and skin; steep; dip, count, retrieve, bite. Once she had discovered the perfect equilibrium between cocktail onion size and cooking time, the first three steps of the experiment never failed. Her lab book testifies to that. It was in the final two steps, pickling, then the maturing period, that she kept missing the mark. Were the spices in the pickling solution the problem? Was it better to put them directly into the jar with the cooked onions? Too many spices? Not enough? Chili pepper, ginger root, cinnamon stick, peppercorns, whole cloves, allspice. She tried all permutations. She flipped through the pages of her lab book to study the tables she had made. No matter what, in the final taste test, an unknown factor kept upsetting the balance.
Ultimately, she convinced herself the water was what had ruined them. She would never reach pearl perfection. And here, in Jacques Lachance’s house, where she expected to solve the remaining puzzle, her onions remained undercooked. What caused the experiment to fail? She blinked into the blackness of the east window. Had to figure this out.
She boiled fresh water and immersed her candy thermometer. Aha! In school, she had been told, water boils at one hundred degrees centigrade. Her teacher had failed to add, at sea level. And so, here in the shadow of the mountains, water boils at 96°C. No wonder her onions came out crunchier than Mom’s, and a tad crunchier than her own dozens of batches in Montréal. Lower temperature means she must leave the bulbs in longer. But how much longer? Calculations of perfect crunchiness or not, she j
ust ruined her first batch of Calgary pickled pearls.
When her mother sent Maddie across the continent, in praise of the water, she meant not the water coming out of the tap, but glacier water. Maddie was willing to learn mountaineering for the sole purpose of fetching it, vital to the success of her experiment. Instead, she met Jacques Lachance, a bona fide climber, and a sweet man, who offered to bring her the precious water from the heights. However, since hauling it is hazardous to him and since he can carry only a limited quantity with each outing, she must use the water wisely. And so, she must solve the problem of the missing four degrees, which she must make up with the exact extra numbers of seconds, and according to the size of her pearl cepa. Despite staring at the white light above the stove, she is still groping in the dark.
Jacques finishes lacing his rock shoes and, with great precision, climbs the perimeter walls of his Bowness bungalow. Maddie follows his progress along the open-plan house, all inner walls knocked down, Jacques having turned his home into one big climbing gym. With fingers and toes, he grips plastic holds of various shapes and sizes that, he explained to her, he had bolted to the studs behind the wood panels.
Very safe. You should try it. I’d belay you.
Maybe she will. Watching his ease sharpens her desire.
He rests on his big toes, looking at her: Think about it. Montréal lies pretty close to sea level. Only Mount Royal gives the city some elevation. Its highest point being at a mighty 233 metres.
How do you know that?
I’m a climber. And, like your Mama, something of a bookworm.
She can see that. Books strewn about the place like so many dirty socks.
Calgary, on the other hand, has an elevation of about 1,000 metres.
He climbs sideways as well as up. Like an ant following a beam, he works his way along the slanting ceiling with the special overhangs. Stops and rests on bones, with arms and legs straight. The higher you climb in the mountains, he continues, the lower the atmospheric pressure, the thinner the air and the lower the boiling point of water. Which means that cooking food in high mountains is a major pain in the butt.
He downclimbs, working sideways and, without touching ground, climbs back up, clinging to walls in the front, then to walls in the back of the house. Back up near the ceiling once more, he stops again, locking knees and elbows, twisting his neck to look at her from high above, and grins: If at sea level you made a relish of onions, Maddie baby, and it had to cook for one hour, at 7,000 metres with the water boiling point being 80°C, your relish would take thirteen hours to come out just right. He holds himself in the static position of the monkey hang to strengthen finger tendons, forearm muscles, legs, improve stamina. And, to pass the time, he reads Maddie one of her mom’s postcards, which he fixed to the ceiling just the other day:
Père Marquette, ma chérie, staved off hunger when he explored the south shore of Lake Michigan by eating a wild onion (or was it wild garlic?) the Indians in the region called shikaakwa. And this became chicagou to the French explorers.
He moves again and shouts: Isn’t that a hoot? Chicago, the Big Onion. Or is it, the Big Garlic?
Amused by his banter, Maddie watches Jacques’s reflection in the north window. Feet apart, knees bent, arms fully extended, grabbing the holds above his head, he straightens his legs, now his hands at shoulder level. As he gets up, he reaches with his right hand to a higher hold, then does the same with the other hand and resumes his climbing. He breathes hard, but otherwise climbs as if walking on the floor. Maddie’s onion practice is as good as Jacques’s climbing skills. Why does she keep peeling off?
Jacques finally lowers himself to the floor and hugs her from behind, his strong arms warm against her skin. He rubs his body against the full of her back: Come to bed.
As you just discovered, Jacques, I’m a night owl. My nocturnal activity will deprive you of sleep. I should move out.
You just moved in. Stay as long as you want and, as promised, each time I go into the hills, I’ll bring you a couple of litres of glacier water.
She hugs him for his kindness: Jacko, I know how sleep deprivation can lead to spatial distortion. And in your job as a roofer and then your climbing, spatial distortion can be fatal.
I can sleep anywhere, my onion lady.
Several more hours of winter darkness will certainly keep Maddie awake. She will count onions, smell them, watch them tumble down on the dark panes of the western and southern windows until the rising sun opens a vista in the east window. Summer nights have the grace of shortness. She longs for them.
If my noise and the light don’t disturb you, the onion smell will.
I’ll get used to your night cookery.
Will he though?
Onion smell. Then, at the kitchen counter, two-year-old Maddie pressed so hard she pinned Mom’s arm down, so that Mom had to wave her other elbow, as a bird with a broken wing might use the good wing to save herself. With her free arm, Mom pushed her out of harm’s way of knives and boiling water.
Mais, maman, je veux voir. I want to smell the onion.
At age two, Maddie spoke clearly. Bilingual clearly.
Elle parle franc, proud Papa told Mom.
Whether in mother tongue or dans la langue paternelle, specialized words such as pungent / piquant did not yet exist for little Maddie. So, at her mother’s pinned elbow, the child sniffed the unnamed dispersion. How to transform pungent / piquant through the olfactory factory? Later, she thought the word faulty. She refused to associate onions and their allies with the notion of something harmful that presumed to irritate, to sting, to bite. Pungent. The smell connected not with pain, but with desire. Piquant. The sharpness of desire. Nobody would understand, so, quietly, she went in search of the absolute answer. It began with insomnia.
The last time Maddie slept without oblivion interruptus was on her twenty-first birthday. The next day, insomnia began. She had just moved out of Mom’s house into a studio apartment on the edge of downtown where the rents were cheaper and paint chipped freely. The floor near the small kitchen counter was so warped she fancied she lived in the crow’s nest of an ancient ship. Each time a truck rumbled by, the entire structure swayed. Rats scurried and scratched in the inner walls. At first, she thought it was the rats’ scratching that woke her in the indecent hours before sunrise. Her brain spent several nights scurrying on its own in the noisy darkness before it determined what had really woken her.
She smelled onions. Not her neighbours’ cooking, not the diner’s frying across the street. What she smelled belonged to the earth, to kitchen gardens in the morning. If she had pressed the juice from freshly snapped leek leaves, the damp sand still clinging to them, the scent could not have been sweeter. She sniffed inside the cabinet under the kitchen sink where she kept her onions in an open shoebox. They were dry as they should be and no rat had pierced the layers of crackly skin to get at the juicy flesh.
Maddie discussed the matter with her mother. A few days later, she received this postcard:
Last Saturday, I checked the library, ma chérie. I found no record that rats eat onions, nor, if in times of famine and infestation, rats ruined onion crops, even in the Middle Ages, the golden age of the rat. What I found is that aphids avoid garlic. If one day you have a garden, plant garlic heads among your herbs and edible flowers. I speculate that if aphids are repelled by the sulphur compounds released as they suck the juice of garlic shoots, rats may have developed the same aversion to Allium cepa. Still, beware. Onions have their pests.
Maddie pinned Mom’s postcard to the wall with a thumbtack.
The rats kept to themselves inside the walls. Still, every night around three A.M., onion vapours swirling inside her nose roused her. She visualized a yellow mist churning in the nasal cavity, snaking through narrow passages opening into the spongy swamp of her brain until the alliaceous mist hit the olfactory bulb. In full smell mode, she closed her eyes, but insomnia took root.
Dizzy chill in the vertigo of
night. A distinct constriction of the spine in the caudal region. Sweat, spasms. Legs jerking. Skin itching. Keeping eyes closed. Tumbling into a shallow hole. Heart jumping, strangling the larynx. Constriction in the tail end and no dawn yet. No dawn.
Only that onion smell. Raw, fried, pickled. Mostly pickled. Garlic, shallot, leek, chive, scallion, onion. Mostly pearl onion. Sweet and sour scent, the three o’clock breath. Tart and sweet lacing around the tongue, inside the nose.
Roaming the small room with the warped floor. Listening to rats inside their secret world. The room in darkness hid its ugly face. A yellow glow came in from street lights. Maddie stood at the curtainless window. Grime on glass diffusing the pale light made a curtain of sorts. The street below so deserted, not even alley cats roamed. Outside, through the pearlescent dirt clinging to the window, Maddie saw onions falling from the sky, a hail of pearls pounding the street.
The perversion of making coffee in the middle of insomnia. Strong, black. At three A.M., the jolt in the mouth. Overdosing on insomnia.
Hypnotized, she drew a taste not yet known. Drawing concentric circles on a peeling wall. The transparent, moist skins between the close coats of onion flesh. Outer layers of parchment paper, crisp. Drawing concentric circles. The universe contained in an onion. Onion rings, the fabrication of time.
Later, Mom sent this postcard:
“Indeed the tears live in an onion that should water this sorrow.” I am deep into Shakespeare, ma chérie. You are not alone with onion eyes. Try to sleep. Did you drink warm milk with honey and anise seeds and a little grating of nutmeg? Or you may chew on cardamom seeds. The Indonesians recommend cardamom for stomach disturbances which, as you know, can upset the sleep of the most placid person. At the very least, since, as your papa used to say, les oignons font pleurer, you may cry yourself to sleep. Sweet dreams, Daughter.
What about the Lady of Shalott? Did she have dragon breath? Did she cry herself to sleep? Did the sulphurous emanations of her flesh drive her to social distraction? But her beauty was also the mother-of-pearl of the earth in subtle shades of white, yellow and red, mauve, grey, purple and violet. Something not yet occurred formed in Maddie’s mind.
Rising Abruptly Page 9